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DIY: Mercedes-Benz W123 Interior Restoration

7th July 2021, 11:59 by Chirag Moro

When we returned back, we saw the shock of our lives. We saw a worker trying to dismantle the front passenger seat and on the other side, another worker pouring water from a hose on the rear seat which had been removed and kept on the floor!

BHPian Mr.Perera recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Lockdowns can be boring. Especially since you have finished watching almost everything in Netflix and YouTube during last year’s lockdown. And this year, when the next lockdown was announced, I decided to do something productive. But again ended up waking up at noon, spending the whole day and night in front of TV and phone. That was when the perfect recipe to kill my boredom came in 2 Checkin baggages.

A bit of History

We all love classic cars. We all dream of owning one, restoring it and maintaining that shiny piece of art. But only a very few of us really take the plunge. Everyone says maintaining an old car is a pain, and you will just waste lots of time, energy and money just maintaining it. But we all live to drive and own some good cars and bikes. I’m sure no one else in the world understands it better other than BHPians here!

The one classic car that I have been a big fan of is the W123 series Mercedes Benz. I always loved the classic lines and the presence of the 123. Since 2014, I have been following W123s coming up for sale. Went and saw a dozen cars during the later years, almost finalised on few deals but later slipped off due to some or the other reason. And during these years, the price of the 123 also started going up. I remember during the initial days, a good car was available for 2-3 lakh rupees, but nowadays it’s very difficult to get good cars below 6 lakhs (talk about price inflation)!

And then I got caught up with work and other things and there was a slow progress in running behind 123s. But in 2020, when the lockdown happened, I ended up watching and reading so many videos and articles regarding the 123 and the fire ignited back. Started the hunt again and with the help of a few friends, got to meet some cars around Trivandrum and Kochi. This time, my elder brother was also super interested in getting a W123 home. Two siblings with equal passion for cars is one deadly combination! We then started looking for cars again. The problem with seeing so many cars and not finding a good one in your budget is that at one point you really get fed up of all this. Things get much worse when you get good photos of the car, and the owner says the car is in immaculate condition and after travelling so far to see the car and the car doesn’t meet your expectations, you feel like stopping all this. We were almost in that fed up state.

One day we came to know about a well maintained 200D that was for sale just around 60 kms from Trivandrum. The car as always looked good in the photos. A quick background check among few friends who knew the car and owner gave some good impressions of the car and thus we decided to go have a look at it.

Me, my brother and a good friend of mine (Mr.D) went to see the car. But this car, unlike the usual white, ivory and blue W123s we mostly saw before, was Red. All these years, we have seen cars of mostly all colours except red. Also the red colour in the photos actually didn’t catch my fancy at first. But since we anyways thought of giving it a try, we continued the journey. We reached the town of Punalur, the owner of the car had asked me to give him a ring once we reach there and he will come accompany us to his house. Gave him a call and we waited. Thinking he might come in a motorcycle, we stared at almost all motorcyclists who went that way, whenever a car slowed down near us we thought it was him. After waiting for almost 15 minutes, (insert DDLJ BGM) we saw a very pretty red W123 driving towards us. We stood still looking at the car, slowly and elegantly approaching towards us. The owner then escorted us towards his house. None of us spoke a word on that drive, we just couldn’t take our eyes off from that car in front of us. It looked so well maintained and refreshing! Mr.D who came along with us is a classic car restorer and has owned dozens of classic cars in the past (including 3 W123s). According to me, he is an epitome of a classic car guy. It is very difficult to convince him, since in most cases before, he finds some fault in a car and asks me to wait for another car. I still remember what he said when we were following that red car, “Just pay and take her home.“ We were super thrilled. Looked like we finally found the car of our dreams!

The owner then took us to his house, where we took a close inspection of the car. Mr D took a test drive and had a thorough look. Since me and my brother were relatively new to this, we just stood there and drooled over the car. The exteriors looked perfect, all body lines and beadings were in place, no nicks or signs of rust anywhere. As per the owner, the car had been repainted around 3 years back when it went for Fitness test. The interiors were all original with factory seats, headliner and carpets. There were few signs of ageing inside though, the beige fabric seats had some minor stains. But all those were nitpicking considering how well the rest of the car was. We then spoke with the owner, who initially was quoting a bit high for the car. Did some bargaining and we finally came to an amount that we had in mind (and in the bank account). We paid him an advance and agreed to do the balance payment the next day. The next day, my brother had transferred the balance amount and we went and collected the car. It was a dream come true moment! And after years of dreaming, a W123 finally arrives home.

In all its glory !

Every time we take out the car, it is a sense of occasion! We get so many smiles on the way. This being a 200D, has the sluggish power train in the 123 series. But that didn’t seem much of a problem to us since going slow and meticulously planning the overtakes added more drama to the experience. Sunday mornings became days when the 123 rolled through the roads of Trivandrum. Mr D and his beauties used to join us for a cup of coffee during these drives.

The W123 with Mr D's gorgeous Beetle and Miata.

When things went wrong

We have a big OCD when it comes to cars. We are famous in the neighbourhood as the family which spends hours and hours during weekends just cleaning cars. Those minor stains in the fabric seat in the car have been a big eyesore since day 1. I checked with few of my friends for a good detailing / interior cleaning place in Trivandrum and few of my friends suggested a place. We took the car there to see if something can be done to clean the seats. Asked them if they have the equipments and expertise for fabric seat cleaning, they said yes and showed few before and after photos of fabric seats they have cleaned. We asked if they can do something about these stains in the seat, they agreed to clean them all without any issue. We stayed there for sometime and asked them to clean some stains in the drivers seat. Since the driver's seat was the least dirty of all. They sprayed some solution and agitated the dirt and did wet vacuum and few stains had disappeared. We told them to do the rest of the seats and went home for lunch. When we returned back, we saw the shock of our lives. We saw a worker trying to dismantle the front passenger seat and on the other side, another worker pouring water from a hose on the rear seat which had been removed and kept on the floor! We just lost it and went and shouted at them. We had specifically told them not to remove the seat or try to do something new! We called up the person who owns the place and asked him why all this was done and finally he admitted the mistake. He said they had applied some cleaning spray on the rear seat and then it started having some discolouration. They tried cleaning it with water and it all went out of hand. The problem with these old seats is that unlike foam in new cars, old cars have mostly organic fibres. The 123 has something called Horsehair cushion if I’m right, which looks and feels kind of like dried coconut husk. When too much water gets on it, the husk type material gets mixed and the water turns dark brown. This dark brown water had turned the beige seats into a nightmare! When a little bit of water made the seat brown, they removed the seat and started pouring water from hose to clean it further which further made the problem worse. And between all this, we can see the workers getting in and out and soiling the carpets with their feet. At that moment we asked them to put everything back and stop all this. We put back the seats and drove the car home. It was such a painful sight to see the car in such a bad state. We tried drying the seats and carpets, but they had got really soiled. We tried cleaning them ourselves with some mild soap solutions and microfiber cloths but it didn’t return back to how it was. Heart broken we learnt our lesson.

Around that time, my elder brother went back to the U.S for his work. Once he went the car almost sat idle at home since I too didn’t get much time to drive it around.

One day he sends me a message asking me what if we changed the entire interiors and made them like new. It is a very sad thing to change all those original factory materials and replace them with new. But considering the current condition of the interiors, I was sure we would never be happy inside the car. The first thing he wanted to bring were genuine seat covers and carpets. I was kind of confused how he can bring such big things and we might end up paying a lot as customs duty. He said he can hand carry them next time he comes. I still was not convinced. One day, he sends me these photos of seat covers, floor mats, carpets and other parts, and told he bought them and is bringing them home when he comes during the end of May. These photos were a delight to see.

He said it will all fit inside his checkin baggage easily. We started planning on how to get things done this time. Our first hurdle was to get these things here without any customs issue. Once we got them, we thought of giving the car to a good restoration garage and strip the entire interiors and get the seat covers done in a good upholstery shop.

Finally my brother arrived and luckily he didn’t end up in customs jail and got all his luggage cleared without any issue. He arrived home right at the beginning of the second lockdown. Since he came from abroad. he had to undergo the mandatory home quarantine. Once his quarantine was over and he got his negative RTPCR test, I went home and rushed to open the two bags. Took everything out and had a look at them.

These were the major parts that came.

A Set of MB Tex Seat covers
New Carpets
Coco Floor Mats
New Headliner
New Gear Knob
Parking Brake Handle
ABC Pedals
New Front Mercedes Emblem
Windscreen Fluid Tank
Weather Strip
Parcel Shelf Fabric
First Aid box cover
Rear Speaker Grill
Some dashboard bottom panels
Front door pockets

But due to the lockdown, we couldn’t take the car and do anything. The lockdown then started extending infinitely. We were so restless to get the interiors fixed. At one side, you have all these new parts and on the other end you have the car just waiting for those to get in. With nothing else to do during the lockdown, we then decided to give a try at fixing few of those things ourselves. One BIG advantage I could find out was that almost everything was available in the internet. YouTube and many forums have tons of data and information regarding restoring and fixing the W123. With some sheer determination, we thought of starting the restoration at home.

The Restoration Process

We first decided to start with the rear seat as removal of rear seat was fairly easy. There are 2 pressing type clips below the bench, you press them and the lower bench pops up. Removed the bench. Then we removed the back rest, removed two bolts below, pulled up the seat and it came off. Next was to remove the parcel tray, first we lifted the first aid box cover, removed the screw on the bottom, popped out the first aid box, then lifted the parcel tray from the clips behind and took it out. Once that’s done, we removed the front seats by removing the 4 bolts from the base and carefully took them out of the car. Once the seats went out, all the carpets were pulled off. Surprisingly all this was very easy, and the entire seats + carpets were pulled off in just an hour.

Once this was done, we took the seats inside the house to an empty room, which we converted to our in house workshop.

We then started removing the fabric from the rear seat bench. Just a quick search in the web and found out the fabric is folded and inserted to a slot at the bottom of the seat. Just pull it from there and it would come off. This was fairly easy and we removed the fabric from the seat. This revealed the Horsehair cushion below. Carefully we removed the cushion from the metal frame which had some old school springs in them. These springs contribute to the magic carpet like ride in the Old Merc. A quick look at the frame and we found there was rust in some areas. Sprayed some Carpro IronX on them and cleaned them. Next day, we rubbed those areas with the green scotch brite, removed the rust build up completely, then sprayed WD40 on them and let it dry. Gave it a good wipe and dried it. Later sprayed black gloss paint on the frame.